Is God’s Own Creation beyond Capacity?

As I began to think about
this week’s sermon – against the backdrop of the Corona Virus pandemic, and my
own family’s experience of voluntary self-quarantine – I found that my thoughts
turned to childhood memories of time spent in the outdoors. The memories were primarily of two important
summer places. The first was the state
park just a short bicycle ride from my boyhood home. There, on countless summer days, my best
friend and I would take picnic lunches, wrapped in bandanas and tied on the end
of poles (carried over our shoulders Tom Sawyer-style), and eat them at the top
of a favorite tree. Not a mile from
home, we were transported to a world of wildness and freedom – while safely
eating sandwiches prepared by our mothers.

The second, even more potent
memory, was of glorious weeks spent at the Methodist summer camp on Shelter
Island, called Camp Quinipet. Here, the
focus was less on forest and more on water.
The beautiful outdoor chapel looked out on the Shelter Island Sound, and
each day our worship there was a reminder of the glory of God’s Creation. There, much of my early faith was formed,
linked inseparably to the natural beauty all around me. Later, as a college student and counselor at
the camp, I would sit by the water reading theology during my breaks, beginning
to sense the vocation that was awaiting me.

So why, I wondered, was I
having these particular memories this particular week? I’m quite sure I know
why. It’s because, for me, the virus
pandemic is one manifestation of the environmental catastrophe in which we live
today: what I have increasingly come to
think of as a situation in which our world, God’s own Creation, is “beyond
capacity” – strained in numerous ways beyond sustainability. In the case of the pandemic, one of those strains
– human encroachment into wild habitats – is at the forefront, as a virus whose
natural hosts are animals has jumped over into the human population. And, because there are so many of us, and we
travel so much and so widely, it has proven to be extraordinarily difficult to
contain.

“How much is too much?” is a
question we are asking on many fronts.
How many parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere can be added
before climate change is irreversible? How much nuclear waste can be safely
stored? How many people can live on this planet? The world population in the
year 1000 was about 300 million – less than the population of the United States
today. In 1950, it was 2.4 billion. Today, it is 7.8 billion, growing by over 80
million a year. Estimates are that it
will reach 9.7 billion by 2050, and finally peak at 11 billion by 2100 – almost
37 times larger than it was in the year 1000!

How much is too much? God’s
good Creation is ours to enjoy – but within the limits of what is
sustainable. The current crisis has the
potential to challenge us all to think prayerfully about how to staunch
humanity’s savage takeover of the planet we share with the rest of Creation, starting
by looking at our own lifestyles. We are
being required to slow way down right now.
We can’t keep the busy schedules we are used to; we can’t travel; we
can’t burn as much carbon as we are used to doing. We can spend more time building the
relationships in our own households; we can find new ways to reach out to the
lonely; we can take time for our own spiritual disciplines because we have more
time. There’s an opportunity for us to
ask ourselves, how has our way of living been destructive and wasteful? And how
can it be lifegiving and sustainable, instead?

Our psalm today provides us
with intriguing guidance for our reflection on these matters. Walter Brueggemann and William Bellinger, in
their magisterial commentary on the Psalms, point out that Psalm 95 consists of
“two parts … [that] do not easily cohere” (p. 412). The first part is a joyful summons to
praise: “O come, let us sing to the
Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!” (Ps.
95:1). And it reminds worshippers that
the Lord we praise is the Creator of all things: “In his hand are the depths of the earth; the
heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have
formed” (Ps.95:4-5). Indeed, Brueggemann
and Bellinger say, the first half of the psalm “permit[s] worship to be
imagined as a benign, agreeable meeting between a generous God and responsive
people” (p. 412).

But then: “O that today you
would listen to his voice!” (Ps.95:7b).
The whole tone of the psalm changes.
The worshippers are reminded of the disobedience of their ancestors in
the wilderness, and that most of those ancestors were deprived of entry into
the Promised Land. The psalm ends on a
note as discouraging as its opening was joyful:
“Therefore in my anger I swore, ‘They shall not enter my rest’” (Ps.
95:11). The sense is that the very
people singing God’s praises may be forgetting that along with joy must come
trust and obedience. The psalm is
coherent in that it reminds us that we can’t have one without the other. Loving and praising the Lord of Creation is
intertwined with living within the limits of the created order.

Which brings us to our
wonderful Gospel text. While taking a
short cut through Samaria on his way back to Galilee, Jesus encounters a
Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Of the
many things we could say about this extraordinary interaction, what’s most
pertinent for us today is that both Jesus and the woman are outside their usual
contexts. The Jews and the Samaritans
are distrustful neighbors with similar histories who have wound up as separate
communities. In this encounter, neither
Jesus nor the woman have the ease and familiarity of interactions between
members of the same tribe. Despite this,
though, and remarkably, Jesus persists through the woman’s skepticism and
offers her the living water that comes to those with faith in him: “The water that I will give will become … a
spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14b). After Jesus amazes the woman with his
knowledge of the story of her life, she returns to her village, wondering whether
Jesus might indeed be the Messiah (John 4:29).
Movingly, the villagers come to Jesus, and he stays with them for two
days. Many come to believe in him.

The whole sojourn in Samaria
is off agenda, for Jesus and for the Samaritans. It is an unexpected encounter under odd
circumstances that allows for Jesus to be heard with fresh ears and responded
to with open hearts. It is a story for
us, in this moment.

Each one of us has had to set
aside any agendas we may have had for the days ahead. We have to do our jobs differently, conduct
our relationships differently, and above all be church together
differently. Deprived of the familiar,
we have a chance to encounter Jesus out of context, to experience the living
water he offers when we are stripped of our usual defenses. It’s a chance to experience the coherence of
our psalm with greater clarity and depth:
to experience Jesus, who was present at Creation, as One who both loves
and challenges us, as a Savior who requires us to care obediently for the world
we share.

And of course, Jesus is with
us not for two days only, but for always.
We Christians are people whose lives are organized in community; we know
that we are never alone. But perhaps
these strange new days provide an opportunity for each of us to experience more
deeply the companionship of Jesus, which forms the basis for our community
life. And perhaps once we can move more
freely again in God’s beautiful Creation – and we will – we will do so with a
deeper sense of stewardship of the fragile world we love. May God give us this grace.